Kenny Parr broke the oldest British Record for Smallbore Rifle Shooting on Saturday while competing in the Scottish 50m Open Championships at the Denwood Target Shooting Centre in Aberdeen.
Competing in the Men’s Three Positions Rifle event, Kenny shot a total score of 1170 out of a maximum of 1200 to supersede the record of 1169 set in 1990 by double Olympic medalist Alister Allan. Kenny’s match consisted of an excellent 398 in the prone position, a world class standing score of 388 and – with the pressure on – a steady kneeling performance of 384.
This gave him a clear lead in the championship, well ahead
of the rest of the field, and with a solid final of 96.1 he was unchallenged in
adding the Scottish Open title to the English Open Prone and Three Positions
titles he had won the previous weekend.
Head GB Rifle Coach Donald McIntosh, who was present on the range, expressed his delight at the result:
“Kenny has been shooting well in all three positions for a couple of years now, but this is the first time we’ve seen him produce such good performances in all three on the same day. It was a well-deserved result, and great to see Jock’s old record finally being surpassed. We’ve had people close before – Jon Hammond with 1168 at the ISSF World Cup in Munich back in 2007 and James Huckle with 1168 again last year at the World Cup in Changwon – so I’m delighted to see one of our excellent group of young male 3P shooters cross the boundary into the 1170s. With James Huckle, Jon Hammond, Neil Stirton and Dan Rivers all having shot in the 1160s this year I think we’ve made great progress over the last few years, and the future is bright in this very technical and demanding event.”
In the remaining events at the Scottish Open – held for the first time on electronic targets – Jenny Corish of Wales won the Women’s Prone for the third year in a row; Jen McIntosh defended her Women’s Three Positions title on her home range, and Ireland’s 1996 Olympian Gary Duff won the Men’s Prone.